For first person shooters (mix of first introduced and popularised):
Doom: started and popularised the genre. Also started and popularised rasterized 3d graphics for gaming (though the game itself was still 2d). Also first fps multiplayer and modding
Quake: various game modes (Deathmatch, capture the flag), as well as being the first true 3d fps. Popularised multiplayer and modding.
Team fortress (quake mod): Different specialist characters.
Goldeneye 64: popularized multilayer console fps, taught character size can be a significant advantage/disadvantage, depending on if you got Oddjob or Jaws.
Half-life: started horror fps genre, (mostly) seemless world
CS: customizable loadouts instead of search for guns each time you spawn, more game modes
UT: AI bots
Perfect dark: secondary fire for weapons
Deus ex: rpg fps
Halo: finally figured out a decent controller control scheme (one stick looks, one moves, button for grenades rather than needing to select grenade from list of guns). First fps I remember vehicles in, too.
Battlefield: large scale multiplayer
Socom: fps game that isn’t first person, online console multiplayer
Call of duty: using gun sights to aim
Far cry: open world fps
Doom 3: used lighting (or lack thereof) to bring fps horror to a new level.
Crisis: famous for pushing hardware and people caring more about the benchmark results than the game itself (I tried the second one, it was ok but I didn’t really get into it)
Call of duty: zombies (and other alternate game modes), kill steaks, online progression (unlocking guns and attachments as you level, prestige levels)
HL2/portal: brought physics and its involvement in fps games to a new level
TF2: f2p, microtransactions (though not predatory or p2w so the game isn’t remembered for this)
Borderlands: loot-based fps rpg
Metro 2033: fps survival
Halo reach: custom maps
Destiny: MMORPG FPS
Overwatch: hero-based, and hero roles (dps, tank, healer)
Dark Souls popularized the stamina meter and the “dropping all your money on death and having to go pick it back up” mechanic. Not to mention spawning a subgenre of similar games like Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen
Dark Souls is literally just Legend of Zelda for adults, which had a stamina system at about the same time Kings Field did. It’s honestly hilarious to me that it became known as the father of the genre, but the immediate copycats were also aiming for a similar tone to FromSoftware so I guess it’s fair.
The first Dark Souls was 2011.
Diablo was released in 1997.
World of Warcraft was 2004 and while you didn’t quite drop all your stuff and money you die you did have to run back to your corpse to keep from having all your stuff degrade and cost a bunch of money.
The first Sonic was 1991 and getting hit makes you drop all your “money” and have to pick it back up.
It isn’t a question of who did it first, it’s a question of who made it popular. Look at how many games have a death run since DS came out. Hollow Knight, Nioh, Blasphemous, etc. It’s also not the same mechanic as losing your items on death.
Single-handedly? Nah. It pulled a lot of existing ideas together though, and it’s certainly responsible for the popularity. Another Minecraft influence is early-access.
Dune II - basically the grandfather of every RTS game out there (and incidentally very, very different from Dune I): opposing forces, resource collection, tech tree, fog of war, et cetera. Or perhaps it was (not World of) Warcraft, it’s been too long and memory gets fuzzy.
I remember using wsad on an ascii graphics game I played back in 85 or so. I think it was called dungeons and dragons, but was not made by tsr. Larn, hack, and Moria were all similar games but I did not play those until later.
yeah HL definitely was the one popularized it as default. quake players changed the bindings for it; i know because i played that game with old-school doom/duke controls
Been RDFG since about 2002. One of my roommates in college was in the top thousand on Unreal Tournament. He talked me into it. God, I get good at that game playing against him.
But for real, i struggle to play games with wasd default and now keybind changes. Part of it is as simple as my hand is just used to using esdf and I constantly hit the wrong keys in those games. But the loss of useable keys on my pinky just feels so bad.
I am unable to play Fallout 4 because E is hardcoded to be “Use.” You can change all the movement keys, but for some reason you cannot change that keybinding. So you can make E be forward movement, but every time you approach a door or chest or person you will automatically open or talk whether you want to or not.
Used to play Warframe pretty religiously with wasd, where shift was part of a key movement combo. After a year or so, developed significant pain in my left pinky.
Shifting to esdf was damn awkward for about 2 weeks. The sheer pinky comfort though.👌
I wish I could upvote twice. It just allows so much more customization, that allows much more comfortable hand positions. I often with disable my caps lock and use A and caps lock as run and crouch.
I never understood this for first-person shooters. You can’t walk forward and backward at the same time, so I don’t see why being able to press the forward and backward movement keys at the same time would be useful at all.
Top down games with 8+ directions of movement it’s great, though.
It’s not about being able to push both movement buttons at the same time, it’s about being able to push more buttons in general. For hero shooters, mobas, MMOs, and other games with lots of inputs spreading out your reachable keys is really good.
If naughty words cause you a level of righteous indignance, my recommendation is to abstain from online activities until one reaches the age of majority
Donkey Kong (1981) popularized having different levels in a game to progress a storyline. Until then, you would have the same level over and over with increasing difficulty
Assassin’s Creed and the Open World Gameplay design. It definitely existed before then, but after AC came out, it felt like every RPG switched to the open world map.
There have been “open world” games since the 1980s. Just of course, memory limited how big that world could be, and how much you could do in it. The genre as a whole is ancient.
The first ones I can think of is legend of Zelda and final fantasy, but I think there was also Adventure for the Atari before those even. The first Assassin’s Creed was 2007, Adventure was 1980
It hasn’t aged too badly, but it’s from an era where you were not necessarily expected to figure everything out on your own – talking about it with IRL friends or reading tips and tricks in a magazine (or on the early Internet/Usenet) were pretty normal. I would say give it a try but don’t be hesitant to look for a guide if you get stuck or lost.
I don’t think it’s just “being 3D”. Mario 64 put a lot of R&D into particulars of how jumping should work, the camera should work, and what the player’s goals should be. Quite a few games unintentionally copied them, while you could see some games not following their lead early in the 3D days that felt very janky to play. Tomb Raider could arguably be among them with the tank controls, though of course it has its own more niche appeal.
Legend of Zelda OoT followed up with popularizing a targeting button (good ol’ Z-targeting) to focus on one object or enemy in a 3D space and move around it or fight/otherwise interact with it. Such targeting has been a standard feature of 3D action-adventure games ever since.
And it’s a bad one if it applies at all. PC shooters of the time always kinda tried, but it didn’t work. The original Half Life got dinged a few points in original reviews because of a few janky platforming sections.
And also the concept of your collection of souls being recoverable from your last point of death.
I know the “death bag” mechanic had been done before, but the disappearing cache is a core element of Soulslike gameplay that has been repeated so many times since then. It adds a sense of urgency and FOMO to the recovery of your stuff. If you die again, it’s gone for good.
Street Fighter 2 popularized and pretty much set to stone what a tournament fighter game should be. Mortal Kombat came first, but its single-player progression was this weird “tower” with some gimmick fights thrown in, like you vs 2.
Thinking about it, I’d say Mortal Kombat popularized the “REALLY fucking cheap sub boss/final boss” that many other fighting games have (looking at you, SNK) - I mean, good luck getting close to Goro in the first place.
I wonder which korean mmo could be considered as the one that de facto popularized pay-to-win as an integral mechanic.
Diablo hands down popularized not only the action RPG genre, but also having enemies as loot mystery boxes. One lucky kill and you could get your hands on a really great piece of equipment. The amount of clones speaks for itself.
I think Gran Turismo popularized the “carreer mode” of racing games.
Yeah Goro was probably cheaper overall, but the CPU in general in SF had unblockable moves and invincibility that they used to interrupt your attack. Of course, input reading goes on in a lot of games and MKI was I’m sure no exception (found this MKII video about it). I think it just got ramped up even more for M Bison, so he ended up being pretty comparable to the MK bosses as well.
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For first person shooters (mix of first introduced and popularised):
Doom: started and popularised the genre. Also started and popularised rasterized 3d graphics for gaming (though the game itself was still 2d). Also first fps multiplayer and modding
Quake: various game modes (Deathmatch, capture the flag), as well as being the first true 3d fps. Popularised multiplayer and modding.
Team fortress (quake mod): Different specialist characters.
Goldeneye 64: popularized multilayer console fps, taught character size can be a significant advantage/disadvantage, depending on if you got Oddjob or Jaws.
Half-life: started horror fps genre, (mostly) seemless world
CS: customizable loadouts instead of search for guns each time you spawn, more game modes
UT: AI bots
Perfect dark: secondary fire for weapons
Deus ex: rpg fps
Halo: finally figured out a decent controller control scheme (one stick looks, one moves, button for grenades rather than needing to select grenade from list of guns). First fps I remember vehicles in, too.
Battlefield: large scale multiplayer
Socom: fps game that isn’t first person, online console multiplayer
Call of duty: using gun sights to aim
Far cry: open world fps
Doom 3: used lighting (or lack thereof) to bring fps horror to a new level.
Crisis: famous for pushing hardware and people caring more about the benchmark results than the game itself (I tried the second one, it was ok but I didn’t really get into it)
Call of duty: zombies (and other alternate game modes), kill steaks, online progression (unlocking guns and attachments as you level, prestige levels)
HL2/portal: brought physics and its involvement in fps games to a new level
TF2: f2p, microtransactions (though not predatory or p2w so the game isn’t remembered for this)
Borderlands: loot-based fps rpg
Metro 2033: fps survival
Halo reach: custom maps
Destiny: MMORPG FPS
Overwatch: hero-based, and hero roles (dps, tank, healer)
Pub bg: battle Royale
Alien Resurrection on PSX was the first game to use the dual-stick control scheme. Halo came out more than a year later.
Funnily, it was reviewed poorly at the time:
Game journos have always been a joke.
Yes, but they have definitely become worse in recent years.
i disagree with a lot of this
I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone say Pokemon. From a. monster collecting/battle game nothing has really came close.
Dark Souls popularized the stamina meter and the “dropping all your money on death and having to go pick it back up” mechanic. Not to mention spawning a subgenre of similar games like Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen
Dark Souls is literally just Legend of Zelda for adults, which had a stamina system at about the same time Kings Field did. It’s honestly hilarious to me that it became known as the father of the genre, but the immediate copycats were also aiming for a similar tone to FromSoftware so I guess it’s fair.
Those mechanics were lifted/copied straight from Monster Hunter, mind you :)
The PS2 and PSP Monster Hunter games are basically dark souls but you gotta kill giant bosses to transform their scales into better armor and weapons.
The first Dark Souls was 2011. Diablo was released in 1997. World of Warcraft was 2004 and while you didn’t quite drop all your stuff and money you die you did have to run back to your corpse to keep from having all your stuff degrade and cost a bunch of money. The first Sonic was 1991 and getting hit makes you drop all your “money” and have to pick it back up.
Mechanic wise the first was Demons Souls in 2009. But your point still stands.
It isn’t a question of who did it first, it’s a question of who made it popular. Look at how many games have a death run since DS came out. Hollow Knight, Nioh, Blasphemous, etc. It’s also not the same mechanic as losing your items on death.
I had a stamina meter in Morrowind in 2002 and in daggerfall in 1996.
They did spawn a sub genre, but the stamina meter being popularized is nonsense.
Minecraft singlehandedly created a genre called “Survival”.
I think most of the games around 2005’s Indie Game Boom created lots of brilliant mechanics that’s been copied still.
Single-handedly? Nah. It pulled a lot of existing ideas together though, and it’s certainly responsible for the popularity. Another Minecraft influence is early-access.
Dark/Demon Souls. Elden Ring
Rolling to evade incoming enemy attack.
Always thought it being a strange way to do this. Bloodborne and Sekiro dodges seem more realistic.
Hope Vaati explains.
Monster hunter beat them to it.
Hate to break it to you, but this had been around for decades before those games came around.
deleted by creator
SC2 did (or did the first mainstream) implementation of a bunch of things, but I’m surprised it was the first for this.
Idk, I think this game already had a grid base inventory: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Schwarze_Auge:_Die_Nordland-Trilogie
April 1992.
Man, that’s some good memories.
Yazinda, Durin, Arva von Harben, Tjalf, Melina and Caldrin, I miss you guys.
Dune II - basically the grandfather of every RTS game out there (and incidentally very, very different from Dune I): opposing forces, resource collection, tech tree, fog of war, et cetera. Or perhaps it was (not World of) Warcraft, it’s been too long and memory gets fuzzy.
Dune I and II were in development in parallel. One of them was cancelled (don’t remember which one), but they forgot to tell the company, IIRC.
???
Warcraft 1 came after Dune (and Blizzard were big fans, IIRC), either way. It enabled multi-selection (based on spreadsheet programs, IIRC).
Sorry about the surprise prussians. I was never any good at typing on glass, I much prefer an actual keyboard.
Though it was used in a few games before, a Quake tournament and Half Life 1 cemented the use of WASD controls.
I remember using wsad on an ascii graphics game I played back in 85 or so. I think it was called dungeons and dragons, but was not made by tsr. Larn, hack, and Moria were all similar games but I did not play those until later.
yeah HL definitely was the one popularized it as default. quake players changed the bindings for it; i know because i played that game with old-school doom/duke controls
ESDF is the superior keybinding
Esdf requires more dexterity and is generally less accessible.I’m an idiot and misunderstood which key bind was being talked about
Been RDFG since about 2002. One of my roommates in college was in the top thousand on Unreal Tournament. He talked me into it. God, I get good at that game playing against him.
I am glad I am not alone!
There literally dozens of us!
But for real, i struggle to play games with wasd default and now keybind changes. Part of it is as simple as my hand is just used to using esdf and I constantly hit the wrong keys in those games. But the loss of useable keys on my pinky just feels so bad.
I am unable to play Fallout 4 because E is hardcoded to be “Use.” You can change all the movement keys, but for some reason you cannot change that keybinding. So you can make E be forward movement, but every time you approach a door or chest or person you will automatically open or talk whether you want to or not.
It made the game completely unplayable for me.
^ This. So much this.
Used to play Warframe pretty religiously with wasd, where shift was part of a key movement combo. After a year or so, developed significant pain in my left pinky.
Shifting to esdf was damn awkward for about 2 weeks. The sheer pinky comfort though.👌
I wish I could upvote twice. It just allows so much more customization, that allows much more comfortable hand positions. I often with disable my caps lock and use A and caps lock as run and crouch.
Asdf is just better for general key availability imo
I never understood this for first-person shooters. You can’t walk forward and backward at the same time, so I don’t see why being able to press the forward and backward movement keys at the same time would be useful at all.
Top down games with 8+ directions of movement it’s great, though.
It’s not about being able to push both movement buttons at the same time, it’s about being able to push more buttons in general. For hero shooters, mobas, MMOs, and other games with lots of inputs spreading out your reachable keys is really good.
It’s such a pain remapping controls on every. single. new. install.
But it’s worth it. Fuck wasd
it’s one key over, is it really swear-word level different?
If naughty words cause you a level of righteous indignance, my recommendation is to abstain from online activities until one reaches the age of majority
Donkey Kong (1981) popularized having different levels in a game to progress a storyline. Until then, you would have the same level over and over with increasing difficulty
Assassin’s Creed and the Open World Gameplay design. It definitely existed before then, but after AC came out, it felt like every RPG switched to the open world map.
I feel like GTA planted that seed waaayy before that. I remember open world games being followed by “like GTA”. Assassin’s Creed was no exception.
Valid point. I forgot about GTA since that was one of the few banned games in my household.
I feel like Elder Scrolls was the model being followed for open world RPGs. Assassin’s Creed didn’t even have RPG mechanics until the later games.
There have been “open world” games since the 1980s. Just of course, memory limited how big that world could be, and how much you could do in it. The genre as a whole is ancient.
For sure. AC just popularized it.
The first ones I can think of is legend of Zelda and final fantasy, but I think there was also Adventure for the Atari before those even. The first Assassin’s Creed was 2007, Adventure was 1980
Which Zelda games were open world (before BotW)? I’ve always found them annoyingly linear.
The original Legend of Zelda. You had a large open overworld to explore, and IIRC could do many of the dungeons in any order.
That’s cool, I haven’t played any of the 2D ones (as you’ve probably guessed!), are they worth playing now for someone with no nostalgia goggles?
It hasn’t aged too badly, but it’s from an era where you were not necessarily expected to figure everything out on your own – talking about it with IRL friends or reading tips and tricks in a magazine (or on the early Internet/Usenet) were pretty normal. I would say give it a try but don’t be hesitant to look for a guide if you get stuck or lost.
I would say the original Zelda isn’t, but link to the past definitely holds up. Honestly most of the 2d Zelda’s from link to the past onwards are good
Which Zelda game WASNT open world???
Skyward Sword in particular was pretty linear despite technically having a literal ‘overworld’ of sorts.
Mario 64 definitely paved the way for most of the 3D platformers of the 21st century
I’d give that to Tomb Raider but both are exceptional.
Mario 64 figured out applying analog control to 3d platformers which changed the whole genre, though.
I don’t think it’s just “being 3D”. Mario 64 put a lot of R&D into particulars of how jumping should work, the camera should work, and what the player’s goals should be. Quite a few games unintentionally copied them, while you could see some games not following their lead early in the 3D days that felt very janky to play. Tomb Raider could arguably be among them with the tank controls, though of course it has its own more niche appeal.
Legend of Zelda OoT followed up with popularizing a targeting button (good ol’ Z-targeting) to focus on one object or enemy in a 3D space and move around it or fight/otherwise interact with it. Such targeting has been a standard feature of 3D action-adventure games ever since.
If you want to talk about “how do I get up there” in a 3d environment, Doom did it before TR.
It would be a real stretch to classify doom as a platformer.
And it’s a bad one if it applies at all. PC shooters of the time always kinda tried, but it didn’t work. The original Half Life got dinged a few points in original reviews because of a few janky platforming sections.
Souls games. Popularized invasions.
And also the concept of your collection of souls being recoverable from your last point of death.
I know the “death bag” mechanic had been done before, but the disappearing cache is a core element of Soulslike gameplay that has been repeated so many times since then. It adds a sense of urgency and FOMO to the recovery of your stuff. If you die again, it’s gone for good.
Perfect example that “popularized” is different from “popular”.
The Sims for the scrub-the-toilet mechanic.
Street Fighter 2 popularized and pretty much set to stone what a tournament fighter game should be. Mortal Kombat came first, but its single-player progression was this weird “tower” with some gimmick fights thrown in, like you vs 2.
Thinking about it, I’d say Mortal Kombat popularized the “REALLY fucking cheap sub boss/final boss” that many other fighting games have (looking at you, SNK) - I mean, good luck getting close to Goro in the first place.
I wonder which korean mmo could be considered as the one that de facto popularized pay-to-win as an integral mechanic.
Diablo hands down popularized not only the action RPG genre, but also having enemies as loot mystery boxes. One lucky kill and you could get your hands on a really great piece of equipment. The amount of clones speaks for itself.
I think Gran Turismo popularized the “carreer mode” of racing games.
M Bison cheated a lot in sf2
Being able to instantly use moves that required the player to charge was bullshit.
He was a cheap motherfucker, but nowhere as much as Goro, who had unblockable moves and could interrupt your hits and combos
Yeah Goro was probably cheaper overall, but the CPU in general in SF had unblockable moves and invincibility that they used to interrupt your attack. Of course, input reading goes on in a lot of games and MKI was I’m sure no exception (found this MKII video about it). I think it just got ramped up even more for M Bison, so he ended up being pretty comparable to the MK bosses as well.
Dude, I have not played mortal kombat in ages but I still seethe at the mere mention of Goro
Mortal Kombat did not come first. It was quite openly inspired by Street Fighter II.
Pacman was the first to simulate a real life mechanic, of munching pills, listening to repetitive music, and running from multicoloured ghosts.